Limited Exposure

I’m ruminating on another post about partners and diabetes, based on Kerri and Kassie’s comments below. But in the meantime, it occurs to me that so far I’ve written mostly about my life as a person with diabetes. And that’s not all there is to me…

“We really have no idea how fertile you are,” Doctor Dumbass said to Pili, as we sat in his office for the initial consultation. “Given that you’ve had limited exposure to sperm.”

I always assumed Pili would be plenty-fertile. Her mom had no trouble getting pregnant; I am a spoiled brat an only child not by choice. And then there was the diabetes thing. Why should I go to all the hassle of getting and staying pregnant with diabetes when there was another perfectly good uterus and ovaries in the mix. So what if she was in her late thirties?

Dr. Dumbass insisted that Pili ought to get a laproscopy to check out a cyst on her ovary. “I would hate for you to get pregnant and then we discover there’s a REAL PROBLEM that starts with a C,” he said. Oh, and I only use Sperm Bank X. Why would you want an identity-release donor anyway?

On to Dr. Hippie, who did another ultrasound and said, I could be doing laproscopies morning noon and night if I did them every time I saw one of those. Looks good to go. After a lot of obsessing about donors, and one very painful insemination later, he decided that maybe Pili should try cl*mid – otherwise known as the drug that turns wonderful sweet and caring women into raging maniacs who try to drive out of the garage with the hatchback open. A few cycles of that, and we were ready to move on to injectables – and to Dr. Only-Does-Fertility.

I confess to feeling a surge of delight small amount of satisfaction when Pili had to give herself shots. And remember to give herself shots. And worry about the timing of said shots. And this was only twice a day. For a few weeks. And surely it would work. Right? Right.

Eventually (this all condenses about two years into a few paragraphs) we decided that it was worth giving my younger eggs a try, dubious genetics and all. So this time, we both got to do shots. Bedtime was especially fun – lupron, gonal-f, lantus, and a humalog bolus if I needed it. Plus a shot of heparin to prevent clotting. Combine that with a regular regimen of injections and you wind up with technicolor tummy. I turned into a regular chicken shack of egg production, and wound up in the hospital (first time I’ve been in a hospital over night since my dx twenty years ago, knock on wood, keynahora, tuttuttut) with ovarian hyper stimulation, otherwise known as OUCH.

Despite all this, the embryos, they did not like their new home in Pili. Or something like that. Damn picky embryos. We still have a few more on the rocks, and I know that there are people who get pregnant from frozen embryos. But I’m not terribly optimistic, I guess. We’re thinking about adoption, but I’m not sure that we’re in the same chapter yet, let alone on the same page.

I interviewed a terrific woman who, because of some emerging diabetes complications, opted to not get pregnant. Her deciding moment was when she realized that she wanted to be a mom more than she wanted to have a baby. About 18 months later, she got her wish.

I hope that the path that brings you to parenting is a smooth one, the kind where you can look back and say, “what were we ever worried about…” as you look at your child.